Sharpsburg

Lee had invaded the North, hoping to shift the political tide.

His army was outnumbered, stretched thin, and cornered near Sharpsburg, Maryland.

What followed was a day of carnage that left over twenty-two thousand men killed, wounded, or missing, and yet Lee held, barely.

He retreated, battered but not broken.

Perhaps it was a more extraordinary feat when the ability of the North to supply unlimited stores and abounding reserves after Second Manassas is compared with the feeble resources of men and materiel the Confederacy could command in making good the losses sustained in Maryland.

This transformation of his army between Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg was essentially the work of Lee.

The measures he took to refit and inspire it anew constitute a lesson that may someday be helpful to the commander of an American army who finds his ranks ragged and depleted after an indecisive battle.

Rest, food, refitting, and discipline.

He did not abandon his view that the chief duty of the commanding general was performed when he brought the troops into position on the field of battle.

He continued to leave the tactical details of action to the brigade and division commanders.

But in the emergency of the day at Sharpsburg, when every general had been occupied on his own front, the larger tactical direction of the action had fallen to Lee, and he had discharged it flawlessly.

Walker had been moved from the right to the left at precisely the right moment.

So go follow us on all of those platforms and let's get into the episode.

Oh, when the sun came up outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, September 17th, 1862, Miller's Cornfield, it was still standing tall enough to hide thousands of armed men.

Within a matter of hours, much of it would be gone.

A corn shortage.

It was just only the opening struggle on the northern end of the battlefield, fought over just a few acres between the North Woods and a small white church.

We got to know why so many men were even sent into the ground in the first place.

We have to step all the way back and explain how old Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North brought both armies to Sharpsburg.

The road to Miller's Cornfield began more than two weeks earlier.

Lee was on the brink of total destruction.

In the midnight darkness of September fourteenth, standing at his headquarters near Sharpsburg, Lee made the painful decision to abandon the campaign.

He issued orders for the army to retreat across the Potomac into Virginia.

At that moment of crisis, a courier galloped into camp bearing a dispatch from Stonewall Jackson.

Moments later, the Federal commander was mortally wounded by a stray shell fragment.

Jackson captured the entire post, twelve thousand five hundred prisoners, seventy-three artillery pieces, thirteen thousand modern rifles, and hundreds of supply wagons, the largest single capitulation of United States troops during the entire war.

Jackson added that he was leaving A.P. Hill's light division behind to parole the prisoners and process the spoils, while he and the remainder of his troops were marching day and night to reunite with Lee at Sharpsburg.

The news from Jackson transformed Lee's resolution.

Well, sure.

You remember what Mark Robert did to the Yanks at Manassas? Remember what he did at Sharpsburg?

You mean Antietam, don't you?

No, sir, I mean Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

Ha, every time they was outnumbered two to one, every time we railed them.

[laughs] You trying to tell me that today's gonna be any different?

sure.

You remember what Mark Roberts did to the Yankees in Manassas? Remember what he did at Sharpsburg? You mean Antietam, don't you? No, sir.

I mean

Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

Ha! Every time he was outnumbered two to one.

Every time we railed him.

announcing his promotion and taking command of the Texas Brigade at Fredericksburg in March 1862.

Until after the Battle of Sharpsburg, the Texas Brigade and Whiting's Brigade formed the division under the command of its senior Brigadier General Whiting.

Whiting's Brigade was then composed of the 4th Alabama, the 6th North Carolina, and the 2nd and 11th Mississippi regiments.

After Sharpsburg, Hood was made a Major General.

Whiting transferred to another field of duty.

E.M. Law made Brigadier General and assigned to the command of Whiting's old brigade.

When I rejoined the brigade, it was encamped here near an immense spring of clear, cold water.

Looking about me for the faces of men endeared to me by common suffering and danger, I missed many.